Fortune cookie

Robert Altman serves up dessert

by Jeffrey Gantz

COOKIE'S FORTUNE. Directed by Robert Altman. Written by Anne Rapp. With Charles S. Dutton, Patricia Neal, Glenn Close, Julianne Moore, Liv Tyler, Chris O'Donnell, Ned Beatty, Courtney B. Vance, Donald Moffat, and Lyle Lovett. At the Showcase (Route 6 only).

Right from the "reversal of fortune" in its title, you know this new Robert Altman movie is no Kansas City but a lighthearted lark. Set in present-day Holly Springs, Mississippi, Cookie's Fortune (which got plaudits from the critics at the recent Berlin Film Festival but no prizes from the judges) has a murder-mystery plot, but there's no murder, and the only mystery you'll have to solve is how the many characters in this small ante-bellum town are related to one another. And though the film has elements of black comedy, in the end it proves to be about as bleakly pessimistic as Murder She Wrote.

It's Good Friday. The parishioners of the First Presbyterian Church are rehearsing their Easter Monday offering, Salomé (Oscar Wilde's, "improved"), under the watchful eye of editor/ director Camille Dixon (Glenn Close). In the cast: Camille's sister, Cora Dixon Duvall (Julianne Moore), as Salomé; neophyte sheriff's deputy Jason Brown (Chris O'Donnell) as a Syrian soldier; liquor-store owner Patrick Freeman (Randle Mell) as John the Baptist; and town lawyer Jack Palmer (Donald Moffat) as Herod. Meanwhile, Jewel Mae Orcutt (Patricia Neal) -- "Cookie" -- finds her friend Willis Richland (Charles S. Dutton) trying to sneak back into her big house after a night out drinking at Theo's juke joint. On Holy Saturday, Cookie putters about while Willis tries to persuade her to invite black-sheep great-niece Emma Duvall (Liv Tyler) to Easter dinner. After Willis has gone out to do some errands, Camille and Cora -- Cookie's nieces -- drop in to pick up their mother's fruit bowl and find that Cookie's been shot to death. The upholders of the law -- including good-old-boy sheriff Lester Boyle (Ned Beatty) and two hot-shots from rival town Batesville, forensics expert Eddie Pitts (Matt Malloy) and investigator Otis Tucker (Courtney B. Vance) -- move in, and after the gun is retrieved and Willis's prints are found on it, he's held on suspicion.

Things look bad -- except that the director hasn't been born who'd be cynical enough to put Charles S. Dutton's pussycat Willis in any real danger. We know what he's really like from watching him the night before: he takes what's left of his half-pint bottle of Wild Turkey home from Theo's with him, and when a police car approaches he hastily tries to slip it into his pocket but misses and it shatters on the ground as the car ambles by. Equally shattered, Willis slips back into Theo's, on the pretense of needing a glass of water, and pockets another half-pint -- which he'll replace the next day, as soon as he can get to the liquor store. So now it's no surprise to find him in a cell whose door is always open playing serious Scrabble (you can tell by the rotating board) with Jack, Lester, and Emma, who as Holly Springs' all-time scofflaw champion (234 unpaid parking tickets) has asserted her right to share Willis's cell and bring him coffee with Wild Turkey "cream."

Cookie's Fortune is all about this kind of small, character-revealing moment: Cookie with her purple Mississippi State sweatshirt and collection of pipes; a bored Jason doing behind-the-back and between-the-legs "dribbling" with his flashlight during his surveillance of the "crime house" (which is swathed in more yellow police tape than Dick Tracy used in his entire career); the way Cora and Camille sleep in twin beds in the same room, with each in turn adjusting the single night-table fan in her favor. Altman presides over this passion play like the God of the Old Testament, pouring down torrents of rain on the First Presby-terian  Church's Easter service and juxtaposing the snobby, backbiting Easter dinner that Camille and Cora host in Cookie's house (which they expect to inherit) against the candlelight meal, complete with tablecloth and Easter-chick decoration, that Willis and Emma share in jail.

Abetted by an ensemble cast so professional they scarcely appear to be working, Altman makes good filmmaking look easy. There's a touch of misogyny in his treatment of Camille and Cora, and the occasional miscalculation -- he telegraphs the fate of the fruit bowl. And it's hard to see what difference the coda-like revelation about Emma's parents makes. But who else could create a soundtrack out of crickets and an insistent fly?

As for the mystery, well, we know from the beginning what happens to Cookie, who done it and who didn't. The suspense lies in seeing what kind of universe Altman has created, whether the cheerful will be rewarded and the crabby will get punished. In the end the cheerful go fishing and the crabby are put in a jail cell with a door that actually closes (which isn't to say they'll stay there). But there's no major message in this Cookie, only a fortune that reads, "You will have a good time."